Yeah, wow, nice. I've never seen one without hair. It's slick as a— Wait, did you say you tore it out with hot wax?

Above, the cover of Orgy Man by Dean Hudson, a Greenleaf Classics house pseudonym used in this case by veteran sleaze author Evan Hunter, writing for Greenleaf's Idle Hours imprint, with cover art by Robert Bonfils, copyright 1964. Hah. We did that all in one sentence.

I don't understand your reluctance to do me in the privacy of my office. Your résumé says you did this guy Chekhov in the park.

Before we do anything else here are five book covers of women shooting men. And here's a book cover of a woman whipping a man. And here's one of a woman about to stick a gun in a man's mouth. This is just paperback art, which is not to be taken too seriously, but we felt we needed to de-Weinstein things a bit anyway. So what's going on with this book? A sleazy casting agent named Stirling Steele catches wind of a beautiful singer and goes to Nashville to promise her anything she wants as long as she ends up naked on her back. Instead he gets arrested for trying to corrupt her morals and finds himself in jail with a friend of his, also a shady agent who'd heard about the singer and shown up in Nashville for the same reason. The jail is run by a hot matron, and there's also a beautiful— Wait. Let's stop. This is silly. The plot doesn't matter at all. Orgy Scouts is so stupid and badly written it isn't even worth summarizing. Why do we torture ourselves with these books, you're wondering? Because we buy them in lots, and others in the group promise to be better. We'll see. This one is copyright 1967 with art by Tomas Cannizarro.

This is really fun! After this I'll shave your legs and pluck your eyebrows.

Above, a cover for Shame Star, copyright 1964, written by Evan Hunter using the pseudonym Dean Hudson for Idle Hours Books. Yep, we read it. It's about a free spirit named Francie Jordan who gets low on money, gets into nude modeling, and ends up involved in the NYC skin flick racket. The cover doesn't depict her, though. For some reason it shows a secondary character enjoying an assisted cleanse in a Japanese bathhouse in Harlem. Maybe someone could ask the artist why he chose that scene, but the cover is uncredited. Overall this is standard sleaze, maybe a hair better written than usual, but nothing we'd recommend.

And when ze leetle libidometer say zat your libido is at just ze right level all of us vill haf you sexually.

Above you see ze cover of... COUGH COUGH! Had something in the throat there. Above you see the cover of Dean Hudson's, aka Evan Hunter's, Twisted Tulips, yet another winner from Greenleaf Classics, this time for its Leisure imprint. 1966 copyright with uncredited art.

What do you do when money is tight? In mid-century fiction, you work that body. You find an artist, present your bona fides as a figure model, then peel down for a fee. Or room and board. Or notice from those who guard the doorway to success. Just remember that however much you generate in cash, barter, or recognition, it all inevitably leads to a romp in the sack, often with several participants, and always with disastrous complications because in pulp there’s no such thing as consequence-free sex. Now that you know the rules make that booty work. Above and below you see an assortment of mid-century bookcovers featuring artists and their models. Thanks to all the original uploaders on these, and don’t forget this awesome example and this one.

You know, here they really frown on this sort of thing, but if you really can’t wait…

Above, Passion Suburb by Evan Hunter writing as Dean Hudson, published 1962. The suburb in question is called Rustic Acres, and it’s filled with horny women who bed any man who happens along. Or as the local Chamber of Commerce put it on the brochures: If you lived there you’d be boning by now. The cover art is by Harold McCauley.

What’s in a name? Everything, if it’s the title of a vintage paperback.

Above and below you will find a large collection of pulp, post-pulp, and sleaze paperback fronts that have as their titles a character’s first name. There are hundreds of examples of these but we stopped at thirty-two. The collection really highlights, more than others we’ve put together, how rarely vintage paperback art focuses on male characters. The prose is virtually all male-centered and male-driven, of course, but because the mid-century paperback market was male-driven too, that meant putting women on the covers to attract the male eye. We tell our girlfriends this all the time, but they still think we just don’t bother looking for male-oriented vintage art. But we do. For this collection we found two novels that have male characters’ names as their titles, and we looked pretty hard. If we had to guess, we’d say less than 5% of all pulp art is male-oriented. In any case, the illustrations come from the usual suspects—Barye Phillips, Robert McGinnis, Jef de Wulf, Paul Rader, et al., plus less recognized artists like Doug Weaver. Thanks to all the original uploaders for these.

There’s nothing quite like getting multi-million dollar bonuses for fleecing gullible investors. Yes, the 1% get yachts, island vacations, and hot oil massages from senators and judges, while the bottom half get evictions, stolen pensions, and the occasional trip to the government cheese line. Clearly Santa got his naughty and nice lists mixed up around 2000 and never discovered the error. 1965 publication date on this.

Above is the cover of Rufus King's 1945 mystery The Deadly Dove, which isn't a particularly notable book, except that it demonstrates one of the time-honored motifs in pulp cover art—the woman fighting for her life. We've cobbled together a small collection of such covers, with art by Robert Hilbert, Robert Stanley, and others. We're curious, but unfortunately have no way of knowing, how readers reacted to these depictions when they first hit newsstands. There are probably some examinations of that question out there somewhere, but not in a place where we can find them. To our contemporary eyes, though, some of these images seem brutal to the extent that if someone actually saw us holding one in a store, we'd be like, "Oh this? Not mine. No, no, no. Found this uh, on the floor and was just, er, putting it back on the shelf. No, I was actually buying this copy of Genital Warts and U." Okay, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement. You get the point, though. But violent or not, there's no denying the artistry on display on these covers. Thanks to various Flickr groups for some of these, by the way. In other news, that long delayed internet installation is so close we can almost taste it. How much you wanna bet it all fails spectacularly?

American pop artist Andy Warhol, whose creations have sold for as much as 100 million dollars, dies of cardiac arrhythmia following gallbladder surgery in New York City. Warhol, who already suffered lingering physical problems from a 1968 shooting, requested in his will for all but a tiny fraction of his considerable estate to go toward the creation of a foundation dedicated to the advancement of the visual arts.

1947—Edwin Land Unveils His New Camera

In New York City, scientist and inventor Edwin Land demonstrates the first instant camera, the Polaroid Land Camera, at a meeting of the Optical Society of America. The camera, which contains a special film that self-develops prints in a minute, goes on sale the next year to the public and is an immediate sensation.

1965—Malcolm X Is Assassinated

American minister and human rights activist Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam, who shotgun him in the chest and then shoot him sixteen additional times with handguns. Though three men are eventually convicted of the killing, two have always maintained their innocence, and all have since been paroled.

1935—Caroline Mikkelsen Reaches Antarctica

Norwegian explorer Caroline Mikkelsen, accompanying her husband Captain Klarius Mikkelsen on a maritime expedition, makes landfall at Vestfold Hills and becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica. Today, a mountain overlooking the southern extremity of Prydz Bay is named for her.

1972—Walter Winchell Dies

American newspaper and radio commentator Walter Winchell, who invented the gossip column while working at the New York Evening Graphic, dies of cancer. In his heyday from 1930 to the 1950s, his newspaper column was syndicated in over 2,000 newspapers worldwide, he was read by 50 million people a day, and his Sunday night radio broadcast was heard by another 20 million people.

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